PARK CITY — Kris Munro, who owns the Torchlight Inn in Park City, had high hopes for the 2019-20 Winter. With Park City Mountain Resort and Deer Valley announcing they would remain open until April 20, two weeks longer than the previous year, Park City’s tourism and hospitality industry was in good shape.
“It was looking great, Sundance was fantastic, our February vacation guests were here, everything was up,” she said.
But in March, it all came screeching to a halt.
“Our books are not looking good,” Munro said on Monday, speaking over the phone from Massachusetts. Shortly after the last guest left the Torchlight Inn on March 20, Munro learned her son had tested positive for COVID-19. She packed her car and drove east.
Thankfully her son is now only dealing with a minor cough. The health of the Torchlight Inn, however, is uncertain.
“I think we can survive the summer,” she said. “But I don’t think we can survive the winter without our ski population.”
On Friday, Park City Mayor Andy Beerman met with several Summit County leaders via Zoom to discuss the future of the resort community, which in March went from a bustling international ski destination to a tourism ghost town. The first item on the agenda — when will the stay-at-home order be lifted?
“We do anticipate somewhere near May 1,” said Summit County Health Director Dr. Rich Bullough.
Bullough reaffirmed on Monday that the county hopes to issue a new order Friday that will ease certain restrictions on businesses and no longer prevent residents from leaving their homes for non-essential travel.
“Our new order will fully support the governor’s ‘Utah Leads Together’ recommendation, which we believe is a very good plan,” he said in an emailed statement to the Deseret News.
But even with the order lifted, Bullough urged Summit County residents to continue to practice social distancing.
“Even though we’re going to lift the order, people still need to be responsible for their own safety,” he said. “We still have to do all the preventative measures that were laid out in that stay-at-home order, it’s just no longer an order.”
Bullough said the county’s efforts are working, and that Summit County is starting to see the curve in COVID-19 cases flatten. With life expected to slowly return to normal in the coming months, Beerman asked a question keeping business owners like Munro up at night — should Summit County encourage tourism this summer?
The answer is yes, with an asterisk. According to Bullough, tourism is what caused Summit County to have an infection rate per-capita that rivaled some of the hardest hit places in New York City. But it’s also an economic cornerstone in the county, Park City especially. In the coming weeks, Summit County officials will try to find a middle ground between the county’s lifeblood and curbing the spread of a virus that has now claimed over 55,000 American lives.
“We’ll have something to advertise — you can come to Park City because we’re the safest place in the world to come to,” said Max Doilney, Park City councilman, during Friday’s meeting.
“We’re going to need to have a conversation within the context of our next health order around how we market ourselves,” added Tom Fisher, Summit County manager. “We have to be very strategic in that.”
Munro said Park City is in a unique position when it comes to advertising itself as a safe destination in the age of COVID-19. The resort town is already known for being an outdoor playground, and she hopes tourists will still come to Summit County to recreate while practicing social distancing.
“Park City is viewed as a place of health, exercise, nature and the great outdoors. We already have that in our corner. People would be much more apt to hop in a car and go for a hike, rather than be elbow to elbow with other people like they would in Vegas,” she said. “The concept of what we’ve always promoted in Park City is a lot easier to sell as the safest place.”
But the summer months are already tough for Munro. The Torchlight Inn can usually break even in the off-season, but rarely turns a profit. Now, she expects the Torchlight to be at 5% to 10% capacity for the upcoming summer, as opposed to 80% during a normal year.
“This is definitely going to hurt,” she said. “I don’t even look at the percentages because they’re so much lower.”
Munro canceled all bookings for April and May and said her business will have to make serious changes if they want to admit renters in June. That could mean only opening one or two rooms, screening customers or providing meals so visitors don’t have to eat out. All options are on the table for Munro, who is taking it one week at a time.
“I’ve thrown a lot of different things around as far as what this is going to look like, but I can’t foresee us for this season, opening up for the visitors full time,” she said.
And even if the tourists return, many of the community’s flagship summer events are either up in the air or already canceled, including Park Silly, a weekly, open-air market on Park City’s Main Street.
With about 15,000 visitors every Sunday, Kate McChesney, Park Silly executive director, said it was a difficult but obvious decision to make.
“We weren’t going to be able to safely put that many people on the street,” she said.
McChesney said that Park Silly is considering moving to an online platform so vendors can still sell their products. But even then, the scores of small businesses that depend on Park Silly and summer tourism will be in a tough place.
“How it affects the 500 plus small businesses that Park Silly helps to sustain all summer long, that’s the part that’s the most difficult because they really do rely on those Sundays,” she said. “All around it’s going to affect us, whether we can have tourists come in, or when we’re finally able to, quote-unquote, ‘open.’”